God-Slayers and Men
by mercurialmaven
Summary: Samuel Winchester, Dean Winchester, and Castiel Lehto; three friends, academics, and explorers who stumble upon a mystery even they aren't prepared for. When curiosity leads to the wakening of an old god bent on bringing man and beast to heel, it will take all they have to reclaim their own lives let alone save humanity.


Sam Winchester was a lot of things. Reasonably good looking, an optimist, a man who attempted to build his moral fibre on his experiences both as a budding professor and amateur parapsychologist. His relationships, while often strained, helped to shape him into a human being with the capacity for compassion that was often tinged with its own ruthless pragmatism.

Samuel Winchester was a Winchester.

Samuel Winchester could not stand Jared Padalecki and cursed those who decided such a pompous, undereducated, and woefully uninformed neanderthal was considered an adequate representation of himself. He studies himself in the mirror this morning, turning his face from left to right, taking note of his every day Euro-American male features.

He's not going to get turned for a date any time soon, but he certainly wouldn't saunter about like a 14th century used up Italian courtesan; pining for days past when her copious arm hair and mustache were considered 'sensual.' He shakes his head to remove the imagery. No. Never that.

He turns off the bathroom light of his shared home and meanders down the hall toward the kitchen. A snort rips past his nose, in the stories he had read about himself there was always waffles or bacon or something cooking that his brother, Dean, would have whipped up for breakfast.

"Great cook my ass..." Sam mumbles, scratching that one itchy part at the top of his bum that always seemed dry for some reason. Winter. Of course.

A few used coffee cups sat on the dining room table, the last remnants of a late night brainstorming session. For so many years, their memories and visages had been used to twist the reality around them into something they barely recognized. Students of the occult? Sure. Samuel and Dean had both obtained degrees in anthropology and folklore studies respectively. Castiel, their roommate and partner in crime, wandered into one of their classes by mistake.

Upon realizing he was supposed to be in his MesoAmerican Post Catholic Syncretism course but was well...not...he struck up an animated, yet brusque, conversation before dashing off.

"Looks aren't going to last forever."

Sam laughs remembering the dry wit that convinced them they'd make a great team. And they did. Through internships, fellowships, thesis', and trips around the world on dimes and dreams, they wove stories out of the past and brought them into the present. They weren't anywhere close to having their own students, tenure, or specials on cable but they did what they loved and explored ritual and myth long since forgotten by time.

That was then.

"Jesus fucking Christ!"

Ah, so he's awake then. Scooping the coffee cups off the table, Sam starts the water for the household french press and searches for an unopened bag of beans. He flinches when Dean enters the kitchen and clicks on the blinding fluorescent light above their heads.

"I take it you've found another one?" One of them had to stay calm and Sam knew it was going to be him. Castiel could spit razors at the slightest provocation but Dean held grudges. Long ones.

"It will never end! Now they have us fighting angels Sam. Angels! And they don't even match Judaic or Christian canon let alone the apocrypha!"

Dean Winchester was a masochist. That was the only way Sam could explain his insistence upon downloading the transcripts of the, so called, entertainment that had made a mockery of them all.

"I told you to stop reading that stuff..." Sam pushed the plunger down on the press and poured a steaming cup of Ethiopian mild for his brother before placing it gently in front of him. "It's just fiction. They aren't real."

"Like hell they aren't!" Dean sneered and tore through the stack to find his most damning piece of evidence. "Look at this! Jensen Ackles begs his fans to alert Facebook to a crazed stalker threatening his child."

"Well no one likes to be threatened..."Sam begins weakly.

"It's got-dang FACEBOOK Sam! It's tragic enough 13 year old girls are killing themselves over it and now, supposedly, grown men are having their 13 year old fans report for them? It's pathetic! These people ARE us Sam. They stole who we are!" The table rattled when Dean slammed his spoon down. That would wake Castiel. Sam sighs, turns back to the next cup and pours.

"We're going to figure this out. We'll bring an end to this."

"Not before we're the laughing stock of the entire academic and occult communities which, by the way, is already happening." Sam didn't even need to look to recognize that sleep-clogged rumble. Reaching over his shoulder with another steamy offering, he waits patiently for Castiel to grab his mug before finishing off the last potent dregs of the press.

Samuel Winchester sighs, swishes around the dark ambrosia of oils and exotic tincture and inhales. Yes. This was the best part of the day.

"Would you mind handing me the cream Sam?" Castiel asks, fishing around his bathrobe pocket for his glasses and a cigarette. It's a filthy habit, he knows, and he normally wouldn't smoke in the house but he had recently switched to cloves; a much less offensive offering that he was allowed to partake of indoors during the colder months. "I've been doing some research as of late and nothing new has come up."

Sam purses his lips and places the cream in front of his cohort. "You'd think the Lehto name would get you somewhere." He gives a wry smile and ignores Castiel's dismissive hand wave in favor of pulling a journal from under the mounds of research materials on the side board.

"Maybe in Finland." Castiel's eyes narrow and flicker to the window. "But it's been a long time since I've been back there. Anyway, this Dmitry has been playing me as some kind of disingenuous Russian-American effete so what little weight it MIGHT have had has already vanished."

"Ouch." Sam frowns and leans back for a moment.

"Indeed." The rhythmic clinking of a spoon against a coffee cup remains the only sound amongst the three men for a brief period. The scent of clove mingles gently with that of coffee and a winter morning breezing through a cracked kitchen window.

"I thought there were Russians in Finland." Dean peers from behind his newspaper, already punctured through with one too many hard pen jabs due to the crossword.

"There are but..." Castiel pinches his nose, "It's complicated. We Finns know who we are and none of us would ever claim to be Russian. Most of the former Russian areas of Finland look like desolate wastelands. It just brings back bad blood."

Dean nods in understanding. "So..."

"So this impostor, Dmitry Collins or whatever, has not only turned me into a joke but he's completely destroyed all credibility I have among my friends and family back home." Castiel's gaze hardens, "Imagine how surprised they'd be to see I took a Russian name, abandoned my scholarship, and preyed on the rampant hormones of delusional women too mentally lacking to understand the true nature of the occult or even a basic mystery religion."

They had all been affected in some way and they all knew that getting their lives, and accomplishments, back was going to be a harsh battle. With each inane 'tweet', with each self-important assertion, which each unearned bit of worship all they had worked for would vanish into thin air to be replaced with the dim shades of barely talented doppelgangers created for the soul purpose of destroying them. Destroying their work and discoveries.

"So what are we going to do?" Sam finally asks.

Dean and Castiel look at each other, weighing the calm versus the storm that will soon wash over all of them before Dean responds. "We're going to kill a god."


End file.
